In modern medical facilities such as hospitals, health care professionals use various medical devices to view patient information or provide medical care to a patient. Some medical devices administer medical care; for example, an intravenous (IV) pump that delivers a solution containing a medication into a patient's bloodstream or a ventilator that delivers oxygen to a patient's lungs. Other medical devices measure and report a patient's physiological status; for example, an electrocardiograph (EKG) that measures and records electrical currents associated with heart contractions.
In a patient room, typically the patient is lying in a bed surrounded by various medical devices. In some cases, the medical devices are awkwardly and dangerously arranged around the patient's bed. The medical devices may hang from the ceiling, hang from bed rails, lie on the bed, sit on the floor, etc. The placement of these medical devices is often random and creates serious safety risks to the patient. There are also risks to health care professionals who attempt to carry or maneuver heavy devices in crowded quarters.
These medical devices have cords, wires, and tubes arranged in a tangled web that poses a safety risk. Also, many medical devices have their own display panel and control panel, which may be small (difficult to see), awkwardly located, space occupying, expensive, and redundant. Many medical devices include their own battery, which in addition to the extra control panels and read-out screens, takes up space and adds weight and expense. In certain rooms such as an intensive care unit, efficient organization of medical devices and utilization of space are even more critical due to the unstable, critical condition of the patient, number of devices, and the high cost of space.
Generally, the various medical devices surrounding a patient's bed operate independently of each other and include non-standard wires, tubes, and interfaces. One problem is lack of integration between the medical devices. For example, some medical devices generate information in a proprietary format, which is not compatible with other medical devices from different vendors. In another example, a medical device may produce an analog signal for a patient's vital signs. Because the signal is not digital or recorded, the analog signal must be transcribed onto a piece of paper or else the information is lost. As a result of this lack of integration, health care professionals must pay greater attention to control and monitor many medical devices individually, requiring more personnel to transcribe the data, more time to review the data, and greater potential for lost data and transcription error. Some devices with analog signals may store the data for short periods of time but again, the time must be taken later to review and transcribe the information.
Another problem is that many of the sophisticated medical devices need to boot up and/or power up before they can be used, normally requiring a certain amount of time before the medical devices are operable and integrated into the network. In emergency situations, time is critical and any delay can cause complications for a patient. It would be desirable for the medical devices to be ready for operation at the time a health care professional brings the medical devices into a patient room. In addition to patient rooms, these same concerns apply for operating rooms and other treatment rooms, including emergency rooms, examination rooms, etc.
Additionally, many medical devices operate independent of a health care computer system or an electronic medical record in which a database of patient medical records is stored. Consequently, health care personnel need to read information from the medical devices and manually enter the information into the health care computer system for storage in the database. In one example, data from medical devices such as glucometers, electrocardiogram (EKG) apparatuses, IV pumps, blood pressure monitoring, ventilators, and respiratory devices are not linked to the electronic medical record. Manual transfer of information from the medical devices to the health care computer system is time-consuming and prone to error.
The aforementioned problems and inefficiencies with medical devices are of particular concern in intensive care units for neonates, children, and adults. In these environments, the patients are typically at higher risk; consequently, there is a greater volume of information per patient and a greater number of medical devices used. Therefore, there is an even greater need to have an efficient system which integrates the initialization and control of the medical devices.